DVD Review: Important Things With Demetri Martin: Season Two

Produced by Jon Stewart’s Busboy Productions, Important Things with Demetri Martin returned for a second season on Comedy Central in early 2010. The sketch show keeps the format the same as season one with Martin performing both live in front of a studio audience and in filmed sketches. The production was moved out of New York. The live bits in front of an audience were shot in San Francisco while the filmed bits were shot in Los Angeles. The always-funny H. Jon Benjamin rejoins Martin and appearing in uncredited roles are Fred Willard and Howard Hesseman.

The material for an episode is built around a theme. Expanded to 10 episodes this season, they are titled: “Attention”, “Ability,” “Strategy,” “Money,” “2,” “2 Part 2,” “Lines,” “Nature,” “Space,” and “Control.” The series features original bits and recurring sketches. “Good, Bad, Interesting” takes something like “screaming” or “counting backwards from 10” and provides instances when it is one of the three choices. “Important Things things” is prop comedy done through animation and it previews things purported to be coming soon from the Important Things store “This is…” features visual gags like a blind cowboy using a seeing-eye horse. “Demetrocles” is a Greek philosopher between Socrates and Plato. One of my favorite sketches is the extremely silly “Bruce the Funny Dog,” a mock sitcom where a beagle constantly has on different hats every time he is cut to the frustration of his owners.

“Ability” has some inventive camerawork in a funny sketch about a guy trying draw attention to himself writing in a coffee shop. Narrating is the guy’s notebook he is writing in and the director shoots through a piece of glass or plastic with blue lines running across the frame to create the appearance of the lined paper.

The episodes “Attention” and “2 Part 2” include a commentary track with Martin and head writer/executive producer Michael Koman. The third disc is a bonus disc and features “Bonus Sketches” (28 min), “Bonus Live Bits” (20 min), “Bonus Outtakes” (14 min), “Bonus Short Bits” (12 min), and the mysterious “Bonus Bonus.” There’s some amusing material throughout, although the five-second “Bonus Shot from Bonus Scene from Bonus Sketch” “Alex Match, Esq.” was pointless to include.

Before you go looking in stores, Amazon states on their website, “This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media.”

About Gordon S. Miller

Gordon S. Miller is the artist formerly known as El Bicho, the nom de plume he used when he first began reviewing movies online for The Masked Movie Snobs in 2003. Before the year was out, he became that site's publisher. Over the years, he has also contributed to a number of other sites as a writer and editor, such as FilmRadar, Film School Rejects, High Def Digest, and Blogcritics. He is the Publisher of Cinema Sentries. Some of his random thoughts can be found at twitter.com/ElBicho_CS

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